Monday, November 2, 2015

Will that facelift cure your low self-esteem? When you
recover from surgery and gaze on your new face will you feel happier and more
confident? True enough, you will look younger. But, will you feel younger? If so, for how long?

A new study suggests that facelifts will do very little for
your self-esteem or your overall mental health.

Dr
Andrew Jacono, of the New York Center for Facial Plastic and Laser Surgery,
looked at 59 women and men who had facelifts with the same surgeon in 2013.

They
all completed a ten-part questionnaire to measure self-esteem before and after
the operation.

Patients
were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with statements such as 'I feel I
am a person with worth' and 'I certainly feel useless'

They
were given scores from 0 to 30, with a higher number representing better
self-esteem.

The
researchers said almost a third of patients – 30 per cent – had lower
self-esteem after the operation. A further fifth – 22 per cent – experienced no
change.

On the average the patients thought that they had erased 9
years of aging from their faces. Yet, more than half of those who underwent the
procedure felt the same or worse.

One notes that 90% of the
patients were women.

British physicians report similar results:

But
there is some evidence the surgeries create feelings of self-loathing, anxiety
and depression.

You look younger but you pay for it in misery. It doesn’t
sound like a very good deal.

Unfortunately, the story says little about why this should
be so. Certainly, there is more to life than youthful good looks, but there is
also more to life than trying to trick people into seeing you as someone you
are not.

But, ask yourself this. What if it happened that one day you
decided to go out in public wearing a mask? Assume that the mask bears a
resemblance to your normal face. How will your new face impact your encounters with other
people?

Will you look like you are trying to hide something? Will
you look like you are trying to trick other people into believing you are someone you are not?

You might very well look years younger, but your confidence
and self-esteem, such as they are, have much to do with the way other people
see you. Are you trying to fool other people into believing that you are much
younger? At first glance, and with people you have never met, you might well
succeed. But, most people eventually catch on and believe that you have been
trying to put one over on them.

Other research has demonstrated the negative
emotional consequences of botoxing, thus numbing your facial muscles. When your
face has been stretched or numbed your ability to respond emotionally by using
facial expressions is severely limited. Too often you will have a blank
emotionless expression. Which is disconcerting for anyone who is looking at you
or speaking to you.

Some part of human communication involves mimicry. When you are
facing someone who is expressing anger or sadness or fear you will mimic his
facial expression with your own. Once you do so your mind will register the
emotion your interlocutor is communicating. If your face has been botoxed your
ability to do this will be strictly limited. Thus, your ability to connect with
other people will be constricted.

And then there is this problem: what if you exit cosmetic
surgery looking like someone else? If you do not recognize yourself, other
people might also have difficulty seeing you for who you are. You will, in the Chinese
phrase, have lost face. And that means that you will be less identifiable in
social contexts. You will lose your sense of your identity and feel depersonalized.

Everyone will tell you how great you look, but they will take
a split second to know that it is really you. In that split second lies your
new social alienation. It's not a good feeling.